For the second year, we are helping organize the Robotics and Simulation developer room (ie. devroom) at Fosdem. This is a community effort and I, Arnaud, am part of the organization committee for this devroom. Tldr: last year’s edition was a great success, propose a talk for this year!
Fosdem is the biggest open source software conference in Europe. It is free to attend and happens the weekend between January and February in Brussels, Belgium.
The conference is organized with a main track as well as … devrooms. A devroom is very much like a small conference in and of itself: Fosdem allocates a room and the video recording. The dev room managers are responsible for publishing a Call for Participation to get people to propose talks, reviewing the talk proposals, and organizing the room so that all goes smoothly on the day.
Last year, we were allocated Sunday afternoon to host a Robotics and Simulation dev room. It went really well, we had so many talk proposals that we had to refuse some, and the room was so full that we had to refuse the entrance to some people during talks (Fosdem rightfully takes fire safety very seriously, so we cannot pack rooms over capacity).
We are thrilled to announce that we got a full-day room this year! This will allow us to have many more talks and hopefully to reach even wider in the robotics landscape.
If you, or anyone you know, has anything interesting to talk about and present, please have a look at the Call for Participation. The deadline for the proposal is on the first of December, and the main requirement is that it covers an open source project. A talk should highlight both foundational capabilities and new AI-driven approaches, showcasing practical progress and key takeaways. The topics could include, but are not limited to, core robotics libraries and applications, frameworks for building robotics systems, simulation tools, or open-source-friendly hardware platforms. See the CfP for more details. You can also look at last year’s talks for some inspiration.
We look forward to meeting you in Brussels this year!